Controlling Marabou
Tips for handling an amazing --
and often infuriating -- material
By A.K. BEST

I have about three pounds of strung marabou in every color I could possibly need, including white. Marabou is an amazing material that fly tiers have been using—and swearing at—for decades. Tiny tufts and complete feathers are used for everything from tailing on damselfly nymphs to wings on fresh- and saltwater flies. It is inexpensive, readily available and, most important, gives a lifelike swimming/breathing action to any subsurface fly.

The very quality that we prize so highly in marabou also the one we cuss about the most. All those little fibers that seem to float about on their own as we tie them on the hook also get twisted around the hook, or tangled around the tippet on a windy day. There are a few things we can do in our tying to avoid some of these problems.

1) When using marabou as a tail on streamers such as the Woolly Bugger, always tie in a small, slightly shorter clump of bucktail, bear or squirrel before tying in the marabou. The small clump of hair serves as a platform and will tend to prevent the soft marabou from hitching around the hook bend. I usually try to match the colors.

2) One or two strands of Krystal Flash on each side of the marabou not only adds a little sparkle to your Bugger, but it also helps more than you think to keep the soft fibers of marabou on top of the hair under the tail.

3) Use the hair and Flash ideas in 1 and 2 above when tying in the wings on streamers, too.

4) Buy or make a small, round plastic container about two inches across and an inch deep and put a soft piece of sponge in it. This device should be very similar to an item at the post office that we used to moisten stamps before they came out with the self-adhesive ones. Pour a little water on the sponge and stroke your finger on it and then on the marabou. The dampness will remove any static electricity in the strands of marabou and make them hold still while you tie them on the hook.

5) Never lick your fingers to moisten them when tying with any material. I know itÕs quick, but I got a nasty lip rash from doing that some years ago. We just donÕt know where the material has been before we started licking our fingers. Besides that, how do you explain your blue lips to your significant other or, worse yet, to your friends?

—A.K.